Adam lapsed into thoughtful silence, fiddled with his dressing gown and, after a minute, he continued, “… I don’t think I’d have survived long in that world I found myself in. It was fifty years ago that she found me, literally in a gutter, and she spoke to me. More than that, she listened. She helped me up and took me into her church, her home and her life. She was a great woman. Just know your grandmother was as close to a perfect human being as you could be.”
He coughed almost without breath before reiterating his point. “No one’s perfect, no, but you’re gran… she was close. Never cross, never wanted to see anyone unhappy. You’ll remember that? She’d leave the room if I ever came close to raising my voice to either of you.” At this, Adam smiled. “She took me in to that church and I did not know what to do with myself. “Me? Religion?” I thought. We never got on in my childhood. That’s something I regret, truly.”
“I still remember the next day, after Sar… you’re grandmother, took me in. I’d slept on an army bed in a near empty shelter, only thing beside me was the empty wallet I was found with and a small, red Bible. I started to look through ‘til I found the words that said “Without faith, it is impossible to please God” and there was another, another verse.” His voice excited now he was in his element, for a second.
“ “… love covers over all wrongs” and I knew, I knew kids, that I had done wrong. When I was introduced to the minister that afternoon he told me, just before my departure that “God loves us all Adam,” that’s what he said. I remembered that above all. I returned on the Sunday, and I never strayed from that routine. No, I never did.”
Again came the old man’s nostalgic silence, but no one interrupted. “That church.” He said before pausing again. “It took me round the world and I never saw a more beautiful thing than the human spirit everyone in it had to keep it going. And it took me some wonderful places, so it did.” Gathering some strength from this thought, he continued. “We travelled to Africa, and built a school in the name of the one and only God, but not to please him, no, not ever. To house those poor street urchins, they needed it, we had the means. It would have been horrible not to.”
Drawing on his final breath he said, “Stick with God. Stick with the church. Things look bad a lot in this life, I know they do more than most, but if you lose faith in our God, he can’t help you. He wont. Do not stray children.”
With that Adam saw light. This is how he always thought it would end…
****
“1. In the name of Allah, the Gracious and the Merciful.
2. Those who disbelieve and hinder men from the way of Allah - He renders their work vain.
3. But as for those who believe and do righteous deeds and believe in that which was revealed to Muhammad, He removes from them their sin and sets right their affairs.” (Muhammad 47:1-3)
2. Those who disbelieve and hinder men from the way of Allah - He renders their work vain.
3. But as for those who believe and do righteous deeds and believe in that which was revealed to Muhammad, He removes from them their sin and sets right their affairs.” (Muhammad 47:1-3)
Malik delicately closed the Qur’an and, although shaking profusely, managed the journey across his dark living room. Lifting his arms was a challenge in itself, and the large text they held made reaching the high shelf almost impossible. But, as he always had in the past, he struggled the shelf, placed the book, surprisingly gracefully upon it, and covered it in a thin sheet of silk. He then, suddenly, found himself devoid of energy so that his walk back to his plump brown armchair seemed to last twice his seventy-three year lifespan.
That life span, he thought, which had seen him do so much. Childhood, well his memories of that were fixed and the same as all others he knew as a child. There was school and there was Mosque. It’s strange to remember the trivialities of childhood, in that all he ever wanted was to be out of those buildings, which he then progressed to spend the remainder of his life occupying. Even if to lecture was just something he seemed to have stumbled into, a degree led to a masters, and a doctorate, and then a job at the University. It was never planned. Nor was most his life.
As for Mosque, well his attitude took a little longer to come round to on that front, but by the age of fourteen he was riveted by the scripture readings and the prayer. Muhammad, chapter 47 verses 1 to 3 to be precise. He read these in their original tongue, of which he was fluent, he remembered and something clicked. He saw the dancing poetry of the words make their way from one side of the page and all to spell out one word. Salvation. He knew this before, he’d been taught of religious right and wrong, but he had discovered this, on his own. This was his pocket of knowledge to keep him faithful and Allah appeased. He remembered that moment once again as his moment of salvation. Of purity. Of enlightenment.
It was that verse which had chosen his degree course, and in all, the course he pursued in life. Malik mulled this over as he sank even deeper into his armchair. I am old man, he thought, and I’m tired. The film reel in his head skipped a few frames until his mind found him staring at the twenty-four year old picture of himself, giving tours of his Mosque to groups of young teenagers, on a school outing. After the initial tour a young boy, his name was Trevor, shyly slipped away from the school party he was with to clumsily ask Malik, “Sir, how is it I go about joining here?”
He never saw that boy again after that day, but it stuck with him. A part of him wanted to believe that his talk had shown at least one boy a truer path. It may not have been true, but the thought comforted him.
By this point, Malik felt almost as though he’d been asleep for hours and the dawning that from this sleep he would not wake washed over him. Not a sudden dawning, but as the sun rises. It was a slow, anticipated dawning. It was peaceful.
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